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07/01/2012

What games makes your nostalgia meter go off the charts?

We all have one, it started to be pretty lame before/after you finish it, but for some undying reason it grew in so much that you have to play it from time to time. Here's mine, just after the break.

Nostalgia games for me are mementos of a previous time where you played like crazy, possibly dodging your parents if they had woken up, and you felt madly in love with all the games musics, characters or even engine.

Of course at that time, you finished the game 100% and moved on to more graphically enhanced games or friendly activities outside (yes we had those!) but the funniest thing is, no matter how long you tried, you ended up playing the same game, over the course of a year or so, there you were, playing it, again, and no matter how much time it aged it was that same special feeling.

Image via WikipediaI guess I have tons of those, but mostly from strategy and as funny as it is, I'm actually installing one of those games right now, a completely favorite franchise of mine, The Settlers or Die Siedlers. I still remember when I first played this game, really played it, on the family newly bought computer Pentium I 233Mhz, with a stunning 32 Mb Ram and a 20 Gb drive and it rocked back then, it was hardcore!

Anyway I first looked at the franchise from using a CD from PCGUIDE, a national computer magazine, which had a demo for Settlers II of about 3 maps. So there was me, completely clueless of what I would find and I went it a general behavior of "meh, ill go and try it on" and I tried it, didn't like it at first, and deleted it in a second and this was only because I was too young to know how to play the game. After a while my brother installed it and tried it by himself not listening to my devious words of doom, since he was older than me. Now he KNEW how to play a game like this and I watched silently, cursing him for actually having a good time, and I, stricken with curiosity and envy on how he sent the little blue dressed men carried items from one place to the other, and then they would have enough materials, it was magical, funny and plain absurd! but I had to try it.

This must've been my actual face when he first started to make timber.

So after that, It was straight forward for me to start trying to learn where the little things go to which built houses and in other to build other things and I'm going to be honest with you, I only found out how the soldier upgrades worked when I was like 15 or 16 years old, it was that hard for me to know how things worked.

But anyway, time was and is a hard mistress for games, and that particular game died out pretty soon in the popularity district, even after having been presented with the complete gold version of it (Bluebyte loves its Gold Versions) I started losing the will and the enthusiasm of playing it, and went on to greener pastures like Command and Conquer series. Although things aren't always clear out of your life like that, and a couple of days later I found out that a Settlers III had already been released with expansion packs and such. How could I have missed that?!

I had some steady income at that time for doing chores and whatnot and when counted all the quarters and Christmas money to know that I had enough money, I bought the gold version (again right, with the gold versions) and it was my prised possession for a long time, I mean the box was gigantic, covered with golden lines and a 3d layered box art, it was awesome, it was beautiful, it was full of annoying bugs and weird game mechanics!

Yes indeed, I struggled with the game mechanics on that game since I didn't bought games that much, I only got stuck with the ones I had and dial-up was the Internet of tomorrow here and there was no way to... obtain some weird demos. But things evolved and I started to notice strategies and again I was in love with that franchise again, I actually did Settlers II and Settlers III campaigns from one side to the other just for fun, it was awesome although I never did try multiplayer because of the painfully awful dial-up connection.

The experience went on to Settlers IV but after that they changed the game too much for my liking, I honestly can say that all the ones after Settlers IV, taking out the 10th year anniversary, I didn't bought and I couldn't care less, it was dreadful and just not in the same spirit. Now I just installed Settlers III and I'm ready to boot it up just after I finish this personal article, so to conclude:

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Addict3d first started as a regular blog reviewing the newest games and discussing themes that occurred in the game industry and between communities. Although it was its main objective in doing so, the blog evolved into an idea of helping small developers and fan made projects evolve.

By doing so, we have created a support for these projects and even created an environment for tournaments to be shared with communities alike.